Background
Hébert was born in Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana, one of three children of Maxime Paul Hébert and the former Linda Talbot. He had two sisters, Maxine Hébert Meadows of Alexandria and Betty Hébert Thompson of Lake Charles. The family soon relocated to Alexandria, where he resided for most of his life. [2] In 1943, he graduated in the top third of his class from the Roman Catholic-affiliated Holy Savior Menard Central High School, then known as Menard Memorial High School. [3] There, Hébert was a drum major and played football. After high school, he became an apprentice machinist for the since dis-established Missouri Pacific Railroad, in which capacity he joined the International Association of Machinists union. Soon he enlisted in the United States Navy near the end of World War II and volunteered for submarine service on the USS Ling , which was operational from 1945 to 1946. Hébert studied in the Naval Diesel Training School in Gulfport, Mississippi, and the Submarine School in New London, Connecticut. [2]
Monroe is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the parish seat of Ouachita Parish. In the official 2010 census, Monroe had a population of 48,815. The municipal population declined by 8.1 percent over the past decade; it was 53,107 in the 2000 census. After a recheck in 2012, the Census Bureau changed the 2010 population from 48,815 to 49,147. Mayor Jamie Mayo, however, maintains that the Monroe population is more than 50,000 and indicated that he will pursue a continued challenge to the count.
Ouachita Parish is located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 153,720. The parish seat is Monroe. The parish was formed in 1807.
Lake Charles is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Founded in 1861 in Calcasieu Parish, it is a major industrial, cultural, and educational center in the southwest region of the state.
Career
After the war, Hébert studied engineering, first at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was initiated into Sigma Chi fraternity, and then at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then named Southwestern Louisiana Institute, from which he graduated. He played first base on the 1950 SLI Gulf States Conference baseball team, a league since dismantled. Thereafter, his interest in sports never wavered. For more than a quarter century, he was a member of the Louisiana Football Officials Association. He coached the American Legion baseball team in Alexandria and was twice named coach of the All-State Softball team. Following a stroke in 1981, he continued coaching mentally handicapped children at St. Mary's Residential Training School in Alexandria, a Roman Catholic institution originally established in 1954 by Bishop Charles Pasquale Greco. [4] In 1985, his teams from St. Mary's garnered the state championships in Tee ball and softball. He was involved too in Dixie Youth Baseball and Softball. He was heavily involved too when his son and three grandsons played football for Our Lady of Prompt Succor Elementary School and then Menard High School. [2]
Louisiana State University is a public research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy. The current LSU main campus was dedicated in 1926, consists of more than 250 buildings constructed in the style of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, and occupies a 650-acre (2.6 km²) plateau on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Baton Rouge is the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, the most populous parish in Louisiana. It is the 99th most populous city in the United States, and second-largest city in Louisiana after New Orleans. It is also the 16th most populous state capital. As of the U.S. Census Bureau's July 2017 estimate, Baton Rouge had a population of 227,549, down from 229,493 at the 2010 census. Baton Rouge is the center of Greater Baton Rouge, the second-largest metropolitan area in Louisiana, with a population of 834,159 as of 2017, up from 802,484 in 2010 and 829,719 in 2015.
Sigma Chi (ΣΧ) commonly known as Sig Chi is one of the largest social fraternities in North America. The fraternity has 244 active chapters across the United States and Canada and has initiated more than 300,000 members. The fraternity was founded on June 28, 1855, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, by members who split from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
As an engineer, Hébert was cited for his design of a practical, cost-effective system to re-line water and sewer pipes, an innovation used first in his native Monroe. For more than twenty-five years, he was treasurer and vice president of Roland Construction Company, Inc., [2] which was established in Alexandria in 1960 but is since inactive. [5]
In the spring of 1973, Hébert unseated O'Hearn Lawrence Mathews (1923-1975) to win the streets and parks commissioner position. [6] Mathews was an experienced politician, having previously been the Alexandria city marshal and in 1962 the first president of the newly formed Louisiana City Marshals and City Constables Association. [7]
Marshal is a term used in several official titles in various branches of society. As marshals became trusted members of the courts of Medieval Europe, the title grew in reputation. During the last few centuries, it has been used for elevated offices, such as in military rank and civilian law enforcement.
On the council, Hébert served alongside Mayor John K. Snyder, who was also the commissioner of public safety and sanitation, and Arnold Jack Rosenthal, the last of the Alexandria commissioners of finance and utilities. All were Democrats. At times, he and Snyder made two-to-one decisions overruling Rosenthal, even regarding appointments in Rosenthal's own department of his executive assistant, the late Floyd W. Smith Jr., the former mayor of Pineville, Louisiana. Snyder and Hebert in 1974 joined to dismiss Smith despite Rosenthal's heated opposition. [8]
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town.
John Kenneth Snyder, Sr., sometimes known as Tillie Snyder, was a colorful, outspoken Democratic mayor of Alexandria, Louisiana, from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1982 to 1986.
Arnold Jack Rosenthal was an attorney and businessman from Alexandria, Louisiana, who from 1973 to 1977 was his city's last elected municipal commissioner of finance and utilities.
As commissioner, Hébert exercised both executive and legislative functions through supervision of his department and as a member of the three-person city council, all of whom were elected on an at-large basis. He supervised the repair and upgrading of municipal streets and sewer operations, encouraged youth sports programs, and worked to expand and improve Alexandria Zoological Park, then a small facility begun in 1926. Located adjacent to Bringhurst Field, the zoo has since been enlarged to attract thousands of visitors annually from throughout Central Louisiana. He once cared for several abandoned lion cubs and a monkey in his own home. [2] As commissioner, Hebert in 1974 hired Les Whitt as the director of the Alexandria Zoo, a position in which Whitt achieved great success in a 34-year career. [9]
After the city charter was switched to the mayor-council format, Hébert became the first director of the revised city department of public works under Carroll E. Lanier, [10] the first mayor elected after the demise of the city commission government and a former finance and utilities commissioner. Hébert left the post in 1951 after four years of service. At the age of fifty-five, he sustained a life-altering stroke, [2] which required caregivers for the remainder of his life. [11]
Personal life
Hébert was known for his wit, strength, smile, and use of unusual, pithy nicknames given to friends and associates. [2] He was married until his death for more than fifty-five years to the former Mary Patricia "Pat" Morgan (July 29, 1930 – November 13, 2010), a native of New Orleans, who was reared in Mamou in Evangeline Parish in South Louisiana and in Port Arthur, Texas. The two met at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Mrs. Hébert was an assistant director of the Title V Employment Program and the director of the Rapides Parish Retired and Senior Volunteer Program. She retired after twenty-one years with the nonprofit organization, the Rapides Council on Aging and received the Governor's Legacy of Achievement Award. [11]
The Héberts had a son and daughter-in-law, Malcolm Paul Jr. (born 1956), and Susan McDaniel Hébert, formerly of Haughton in Bossier Parish. Their daughters are Paulette H. Ryland (born c. 1952), Tommie Jean Hébert, and Renee' Louise Hébert Gutierrez, all of Alexandria, and Deborrah Ann Hébert, [11] the dean of students at California Maritime Academy in Vallejo in Solano County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, [12] and a former resident of San Angelo, Texas. Their six grandchildren are Malcolm "Trey" Hebert, III, of Lafayette, [13] Clifton Bert Ryland, Jillian Ann Gutierrez, Melicia Soileau Ryland, Amelia Marydell Ryland, and John Schilling Gutierrez Jr., all of Alexandria. [11] His son-in-law, B. Dexter Ryland, was a judge of the Louisiana 9th Judicial District Court in Alexandria from 1990 until his death in 2005; he was the husband of the Héberts' daughter, Paulette. [14]
The Héberts are interred at Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville. [11]
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